Chapter 29 Blossom
Blossom
SADIE
Jonah tries his best, bless his little heart, but an after-dinner sugar crash after a long day in the sun was always going to win. He makes it through the sparklers, standing very serious with his hand held out away from his body, the way Walker showed him.
Then he drops the sparkler accidentally. And with that, the crash arrives, and suddenly he bursts into tears.
Walker catches my eye over the top of his head as he bends down on one knee to sort it out. We exchange a look. Hatches, battened down.
But as good as Walker always is with Jonah, right now I can tell the man’s head isn't fully in it.
He's been melancholy ever since the conversation with his dad.
It's showing now in the way he's approaching Jonah's tears with questions and logic.
Trying to identify the problem and fix it, the way he fixes everything, when what Jonah needs right now has nothing to do with problem-solving.
I think about what I wanted to hear when I was little and upset about something. What I never got. All I needed was just a few comforting words. Someone to tell me they heard me and understood.
Maybe I can help both of them at once.
I put my hand on Walker's shoulder and lean down to murmur in his ear. “Can I try?”
He rises immediately. “Please.” He mouths two words at me over Jonah's head: save us.
I gather Jonah to me and just hold him. Don't ask what's wrong yet, don't try to fix anything. Just hold him and rub his back in slow circles.
“I'm so sorry you're feeling this way,” I tell him. “It's really hard when things don't go right.”
The story comes tumbling out in fits and starts. Somebody else got the last slice of strawberry shortcake and he'd been waiting all day for it, and now his tummy hurts and the sparkler went out when he dropped it and everything is terrible and the world is deeply unfair.
“That is a really hard day,” I tell him seriously, when he's done.
He collapses against me, limp, every last bit of fight gone out of him.
I look up at Walker over Jonah's shoulder. He's leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed, watching us, and the look on his face takes my breath away. The warmth behind the eyes. That particular small, private smile.
Then he steps in, scooping his son up into his arms. “C’mon, JoJo. We’ll fight the world tomorrow.”
He starts carrying him to the bedroom.
“Sadie.” Jonah’s hand reaches out blindly in my direction. “Hold my hand.”
I take it. His fingers curl around two of mine, warm and loose, and the three of us walk like that through Rosemont and down the hall, Walker carrying most of him, me tethered to his small fist.
Seeing this gruff cowboy carry his sleepy little boy, nestled so peacefully in his arms, does things to me that I’m not prepared for.
For one thing, it makes my heart feel about three sizes too big for my chest.
For another thing, it makes my ovaries wake up and start contemplating things in a very serious way.
Because watching him carry his son through the dark in those big, strong arms, I find myself thinking about him cradling something smaller. Someone newer. A little baby with deep green eyes and a tiny, toothless smile.
The thought is so vivid it almost hurts.
I look at the hallway wall and remind myself about New York. The contract. The vow a young girl made to herself with her whole chest to be independent and strong. The vow that got me out of the double-wide and into a college scholarship and a future I’m building with my own blood, sweat, and tears.
I feel some of those tears coming to my eyes now. I blink them back. Now is not the time.
Jonah’s bedroom here isn’t quite the same barely-contained explosion of art and stuffed animals and scientist kits as his room at home, but it’s close.
There are a dozen crayon drawings tacked to the wall and a collection of rocks lined up on the windowsill going from biggest to smallest. An ant farm with a purple lupine inside it. So very Jonah.
Walker lowers him onto the bed and pulls the quilt up and tucks it around his shoulders. Jonah's eyes are closed but he's not quite gone yet.
Bending down, Walker kisses the top of Jonah’s head.
When he turns, he finds me in the doorway.
The expression on his face is unsmiling and serious.
But I know him well enough now to see beneath the hardened exterior to what lies beneath it.
He’s someone who feels everything and has spent years pretending he doesn’t.
Not only has he got a big heart, it’s a soft one too.
No wonder he guards it so ferociously.
He crosses the room and puts his hand around my waist without a word, and we step out into the hall and he pulls the door gently shut behind us.
And then he just… keeps holding on. Both arms around me, his face dropped to the curve of my neck, not saying anything.
It's not often Walker asks for anything. He's not asking now, not in words. But I know what this is. So I wrap my arms around him and rub slow circles on his back. I press my cheek to his chest and let him take whatever he needs.
After a while he says, muffled against my neck: “Just a lot of memories today. My own childhood. Mom.”
I stroke my fingers through his hair. “I wish I could have met her.”
“She would have loved you,” he says. “Just like everyone else in the Rhodes clan does.”
I swallow the lump in my throat at the thought of the whole Rhodes clan loving me.
Present company included?
His expression is tired and honest. “I should have been there for her. Same way I should have been there for Jonah.” He shakes his head.
“I missed his first words, Sadie. First steps. First Christmas pageant. So many firsts I'll never get back. All for what? To chase a career I don’t even want anymore? I made all the wrong choices.”
The regret and self-loathing in his eyes sends a pang through my chest. He’s so hard on himself.
I take his face in my hands. “You’ve been carrying so much by yourself,” I say.
“The kind of stardom that burns people up and leaves nothing left. The breakdown of the family you wanted to make. It’s okay to feel hurt and disappointed and worry it’s all gone wrong.
But you’re doing so much right. And you’re not alone. Everyone here loves you.”
Including me.
“Especially that boy in there,” I say instead, throat tight.
I continue, “He’s not keeping a tally. He doesn't know what he missed. He only knows what he has. And what he has is a father who tucks him in every evening and dries his tears and gets up in the middle of the night when his tummy hurts. Who taught him to hold a sparkler and sit a horse and make pancakes on a Sunday morning.” I brush my thumb across his jaw.
“He'll remember the Fourth of July parade. He'll remember you were there for his first heartbreak and first graduation and every hard thing in between. That’s what counts.”
His thumb moves back and forth across my hip, slow and absent.
At last, Walker says, “He's like a plant with strong roots in good dirt. But this summer taught me he still needed sunshine. Taught me he’s blossomed under it. Under the love of a good woman.”
“Most men do,” I tease, trying to lighten the mood. “The good ones, anyway.”
He pulls me in close again. “Ain’t that the truth,” he mumbles against my hair.
He reaches up and tucks a curl behind my ear, his fingers trailing down the shell of my ear. He looks at me then like he wants to say something.
Something important. Something big.
But in the end he just presses one more kiss to my lips before he laces his fingers through mine. Without another word, he walks me back out into the summer night.